Kindred Spirit Web Sep 06
Dawn Eagle Woman
Interview by Sarah James
Sitting with Dawn Eagle Woman is like sitting in a room with a mountain. Her impassive face, capped with snow-white hair, and her steely blue gaze might be intimidating if it were not so peaceful. I feel calmed by the presence of something vast, solid and safe and the feeling of stillness she exudes. It is as if she brings her native landscape with her when she travels. Dawn Eagle lives 8000 feet up in the Wyoming mountains between Laramie and Cheyenne on 120 acres of beautiful wilderness, a sanctuary for elk, deer, coyote and birds and place of retreat for the many people that come to her for healing. Twice a year she travels to the UK to offer private sessions, offering people the chance to create a powerful paradigm shift in their thinking in a deep transformational healing experience.
Dawn Eagle's sessions are profound and alchemical, generally lasting 3 hours, during which the individual experiences deep shifts in body-mind and consciousness. She weaves a particular magic which is unmistakable and cathartic. Guided by the feminine creative spirit, she draws on her own deep spiritual experience and a vast array of knowledge, ranging from Shamanic healing and divination to the arts, psychoanalytic theory and spiritual psychology. I had heard a lot of praise for Dawn Eagle Woman before I met her but still had little idea of what a session would involve. Obviously each individual will have their own journey but I asked Dawn Eagle if she could sum up what happens when she works with people.
“The session is an opportunity to create a paradigm shift for people in their thinking; to change the way they look at things. I work on them energetically, and they may have a healing experience. My fondest wish is that what they bring to a session can be healed, if that is right for them. It can be a physical healing – I had one woman spontaneously heal her breast cancer in a sweat lodge. She came as a last hope the day before surgery and the next day the x-ray was clear. There was no cancer there. People may feel spontaneous relief of chronic pain.”
- How can that happen? What is it that you do that causes such a change?
“People are taken out of flow. I would choose to call it Grace. When they are brought back into flow, harmony is restored. Then they can choose whether to stay in it or not. But none of this is me: I am simply the channel, a clear and useful channel at best. I use my talents to see if I can restore the flow. Or a paradigm shift in their thinking so that they can restore the flow for themselves.
“I feel two important factors are the breath and the question. Our questions are powerful tools: the Universe is just potential until we ask a question, and compel the universe to respond. It seems we focus many times on answers but answers are an energetic dead end unless they are followed by another question. It serves us to live with the question and not crystallise on the answer, but to revel in the chaos of possibilities.
“I recognise this struggle in many people by their locked jaw, which is the last place on the human body that you can control what wants to enter or release. When we lock our jaws, it feels to us that we are in control but if we are locking up in this way it leads us to a variety of challenges. Similarly with the breath. We hold our breath habitually and it becomes a way in which we control - or think we control - how we interface with our environment and others. A breath fully breathed is a gift we give ourselves. Being aware of the breath is a brilliant way to notice how you are relating to the world.
” Dawn Eagle’s talents come from a blending of all the cultures, teachings and practices she has experienced and studied, along with a spiritual gift she was born with. She has a clear remembrance of wanting to heal her paralysed father at 18 months old and has never wanted to do anything else. “It is a calling. It is all that I could do. My deepest motivation has always been healing.” Even so, such a gift takes time to develop into a trusted transformational tool. For Dawn Eagle, motherhood gave her the maturity and focus to manage her powers and grow into them. “Some of my beloved friends call me a Shamom,” she laughs, explaining how having 4 children in 5 years grounded her (she now has several grandchildren). Just after the birth of her second child, in 1972, Dawn Eagle had a near-death experience that marked an important change in her spiritual journey.
“I bled to death at 25. I was in a room by myself after an 18-hour labour and healthy birth when I haemorrhaged. I didn’t know what was happening to me. A nurse came in at the last minute, picked up my hand and said ‘Code blue, this woman has no pulse’. I could hear her but my body had no feeling. I was in the process of leaving my body.”
Many of us are now familiar with stories of travelling through a tunnel to the light and for some reason turning back; in Dawn Eagle’s case it was the understanding that her children would feel abandoned that made her choose to return to her body. Back in 1972, however, nobody talked about near-death experiences and it took a while for this event to work its alchemy on Dawn Eagle’s life.
“Over time I knew that this was not the only reality. We are eternal beings. We are fragments of the God force, each individual, and unique. It is our choice to be on this great adventure called life.”
As a healer, Dawn Eagle shares her understanding of the transformational properties of pain. When people come to a session, there is usually a surface reason for their visit, the latest manifestation of a deeper problem that they are then able to tackle with her wisdom, guidance and energy work. Sessions will often touch on core issues that can be very challenging but the real paradigm shifts come when people are able to make that journey with her.
“We face the hard stuff. I go with them into their pain. I don’t pretend it isn’t there. It’s a person’s willingness that determines how deep we go into an issue, how effective the session is. Many times I can see your perfected self. So my job is to bring your current self into line with your potential self.”
Working with Dawn Eagle is a unique, powerful, moving experience, which is as hard to compare as it is to describe. For each person, the journey is unique, but the many and varied testimonials Dawn Eagle has received confirm that her work is strong and ongoing. “She kept me safe, continued to challenge me and validated all I shared with her. Ten years of therapy could not have been as constructive,” said one. “Dawn is a remarkable woman, she draws deep (and sometimes painfully) to bring out the brightness of our soul. She challenges and asks a lot but I have found that when she senses a willing receptivity, she softens, and then movement flows and miracles happen,” said another. Unlike many healers whose work may fade with time, hers triggers our own self-empowering qualities and gets stronger as time goes by. She shows us how to sculpt our souls, returning them to their original shape and beauty.
Dawn Eagle Woman received her name, Ahnpo Wambli Win, in 1982, from a Medicine Man, Tate Wakapa Wambli. In 1994 she was honored by the Hopi Princess and given the name Kwaahu Wiwti, White Eagle.
- What does it mean to be called Dawn Eagle Woman?
“It is a name I certainly had to grow into! It was given to me after a vision quest. I was high up on a mountain. I had been there a long time and I was in despair. No animals were coming. When my medicine man came to collect me, it was dawn, and he could see what I could not see, that I had 7 eagles sitting behind me in a tree. For several years I was able to fly in an eagle body. With my keen eyes I could see fish in the lakes. It was a wonderful feeling to ride the wind currents. But when an eagle wants to fly it has to be willing to drop, to fall. When you step off a branch, you don’t know that you will fly, it is something you learn to accept. I have to be willing to drop into the unknown in a session with someone. It is always a challenge. I take on their skin. I match my body to theirs so I know what’s going on for them. If we jump into the abyss we believe we’ll be crushed at the bottom. But there is no bottom. I hope to teach you that the abyss is a wonderful place to fly. You have to have Faith. An absolute knowing that there is a higher power and we are part of the higher power. We have our experiences for important reasons. For me, it is all about co-creation with the God-force, the All-That-Is.”
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